This time we’re going to tackle the stuff that didn’t go so well first:

Your least favourite customer? Unless you can honestly say it’s your fault and you can rectify the problem, it’s time to let them go. You don’t need to work with customers you don’t enjoy working with.

And it will give you more head space to start looking for the customers you really want.

For now, just leave them behind you. You can always revisit it another day, if you really want to.

Your biggest time suck? Ditch it or delegate. Yes, it really is that simple. If you truly can’t do either of those things, then you need to find a way to make yourself or the task more efficient. But we vote for ditch or delegate!

Your least successful product or service? That’s a bit more tricky. Instinctively, having got this far into this post you may already be leaning towards getting rid of it, but we suggest at the moment you put it on the back burner.

Don’t be too hasty – after all with some tweaking, or improved marketing, it could turn into a very profitable part of your business. But don’t worry about that right now, just put it on hold.

And on to what went well:

But when looking at your best customer, supplier or lead generator, you need to know why they are the best. Is it because they are easy to deal with, the most profitable, generate the most business for you? What you are really trying to do here, is identify the DNA of this success.

And the reason?

You want to replicate that success. You want to clone your best customer, best supplier etc, so you improve your business, and spread your risk.

Never rely on one lead generation tool, or have too much of your business heavily reliant on one customer – the risk is too great.

We think that’s probably enough brain power for one day (well it is for us, anyway!), but we will unpick different aspects of this in more detail over the next few months.

Ifyou’d like help with getting your marketing sorted, give us a call on 01256 83 11 10.